Credit Reports and Obtaining Court Records

The Civil Court of the City of New York is a court of record. This
means that it maintains records of civil actions and proceedings.
Any member of the public, whether he or she is involved in an action
or not, has the right to examine or copy a record, if it has not
been sealed.

Credit Reports

Credit Reporting Firms (such as TRW; Equifax and TransUnion) have
a staff which visits the court to review the records of the court
and to record Judgments,
Satisfactions of Judgments, Orders
Vacating Judgments, Stipulations
of Settlement, Discontinuances and Dismissals
of cases. This is information that they deem useful to their clients
and is used for the maintenance of a data bank which exchanges information
across the country.

In order to dispute any credit report an individual must write
to the credit reporting firm and provide copies of documents which
are believed to support the complaint. It is not the duty or responsibility
of court personnel to report to or to explain any discrepancy to
the credit reporting firm. The credit reporting firm has a responsibility
to remove from its file any information that is incorrect
or which can not be verified, but will not remove
any information which is accurate and verifiable,
and is less than seven years old (10 years for bankruptcies). You
can send a statement explaining your version of the disputed information
to be filed with it, and the service must send that statement to
any inquirer when making their report.

Obtaining Court
Records

Records are retained by Civil Court for 25 years; three years in
the courthouse and an additional 22 years off-site in an archives
storage location. Records which are in the courthouse are available
by completing a requisition form and filing the form with the Clerk.
This can generally be accomplished while you wait. For records which
have been sent to the archives, two to three weeks time may be necessary
for the staff to retrieve the file and make it available for your
use. To find out where to go in your county to requisition a recent
or archived file, click on Locations.

In order to requisition a case record an individual must provide
the Index Number of
the case. For recent cases the Index Number can be found by use
of the public access computer. To find out where the public access
computer is located in your county, click on Locations.
If the case is an older one which has not been entered into the
computer system, in order to determine the Index Number of the case,
the manually maintained Index Books, filed by Year and the name
of the Plaintiff (the person who started the lawsuit), must be reviewed.
It is suggested that you come to the court with as much information
as possible concerning a case to avoid wasting time in locating
the Index Number. For purposes of security of Court records, you
may also be required to present personal identification to the Clerk
before you can be permitted access to a file.

Court personnel may provide access for examining a file, and may
provide forms to correct some information. However, at times, you
may have to obtain the proper form elsewhere. For example, although
the law mandates that a Satisfaction of Judgment be filed by the
Judgment Creditor, in practice, any party may file a Satisfaction
of Judgment. Similarly, any party may file a Stipulation of Discontinuance,
a General Release or any document relating to a case. As proof of
filing which can be sent to the Credit Reporting firm(s), court
personnel can stamp an accompanying copy of a document which you
are filing with the Court. In most instances a private photocopying
machine is available for the use of the public for a fee.